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"HÔTEL DE FERRAS, PARIS, _August 1, 1846_.
"My dear Father, -- I got in here last night, after a very painful and tiresome journey, at eleven o'clock. At least it was eleven o'clock by Calais time, but they are so careless in this country about their clocks that it would be very difficult to say what the right time really was were I not able to consult the excellent chronometer which you and Mamma were so kind as to give me after my success in the Schools at Oxford this summer. I confess to the childishness of having rung the chimes in it five or six times during the night to while away the tedium of the journey in the Diligence from Beauvais. Beauvais contains a really remarkable cathedral, but it is unfinished. I notice, indeed, that many of the buildings undertaken by the French remain in an incomplete condition.